I joined the 'Times' in 1972, and I came with the mark of Cain on me because I was clearly against the war. But my editor, Abe Rosenthal, he hired me because he liked stories. He used to come to the Washington bureau and almost literally pat me on the head and say, 'How is my little Commie today? What do you have for me?'
Seymour Hersh
It doesn't matter that Bush scares the hell out of me. What matters is that he scares the hell out of a lot of very important people in Washington who can't speak out, in the military, in the intelligence community.
I'm not convinced that every secret has to be published. I think there are secrets worth keeping, and I think there are secrets not worth keeping.
I always believe in truth. Sometimes I know truth others don't. That puts me in a little bit of jeopardy sometimes.
I didn't know I was gonna be a writer when I started out.
Tracking down people who did not want to be found was vital to what I did for a living, and I was good at it.
Yeah, I shoot my mouth off. There's a huge difference between writing and thinking.
I'm a better American than 99% of the guys in the White House.
I have always been a freelancer. I always work for myself.
I don't necessarily buy the story that Bin Laden was responsible for 9/11.
I sometimes think that we underestimate Trump, but that's just my opinion. I always like to tack the other way, I guess.
The day after 9/11, we should have gone to Russia. We did the one thing that George Kennan warned us never to do - to expand NATO too far.
I think the moment anybody seriously tampers with the First Amendment, you're going to see an outcry.
Bush can talk about 100,000 people wanting to go work in the police or in the army. It's because there's nothing else for them to do. They're willing to stand in line to get bombed because they want to take care of their family.
I don't think much of the journalism that I see.
If you think I write stories where it is all right to just be good enough, are you kidding? You think I have a cavalier attitude on throwing stuff out? Are you kidding? I am not cavalier about what I do for a living.
Maybe I am not an easy guy.
I have this sort of heuristic view that journalism, we possibly offer hope because the world is clearly run by total nincompoops more than ever... Not that journalism is always wonderful - it's not - but at least we offer some way out, some integrity.
I say to people, 'Do you have any idea how hard it is to do that, to write 7,000 words in 10 hours or 12 hours for the front page of the 'New York Times' and to know that they trust you so much that that it's going to lead the paper?' It's hard. I mean, it's a feat.
I hate to see the way journalism is devalued: We have to feed the machine; we have to feed the Trump outrage machine, to feed the anger against Trump, to feed the New York liberal anger.
I wrote a lot about Cheney in 'The New Yorker,' but I wrote very little of what I know. The only time I ever mentioned what he ever said at a meeting was when there were many people there who were not insiders, you know, other people not in the government, so my sources would be protected.
Writing about corporate America had sapped my energy, disappointed the editors, and unnerved me.
Most of the important secrets that I've known about, the real secrets that are known about aren't worth publishing.
I don't think I've ever met a public official that didn't think he was doing the right thing. I can't think of one.
I came out of a lower-middle-class background. At that time, everyone used to define themselves: Stalinist, Maoist, whatever. I thought they meant 'miaowist'. Seriously! Something to do with cats.
Using words to make other people less big made me feel bigger, though the psychological dimension to that... well, I don't want to explore it.
I can't fudge what I write. But I can certainly fudge what I say.
I happen to write a lot of stories that make Kissinger look bad. I'd rather that the stories weren't true, but they all happen to be true.
